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Finally booted my TRS-80 M4 and need some direction

I

irishmike

Experienced Member
Joined
Sep 21, 2006
Messages
331
Location
Overland Park, KS USA
Greetings guys!

As the title indicates, I have my TRS-80 booted into LDOS 5.1.3 and I am a little lost because though I used these back in the day, I was never involved with directly loading DOS of any kind as I was a very young person.

I could use a copy of the LDOS manual if there is any copies in existence, I was hoping for a PDF.

But the immediate thing is 'How do you format a diskette in drive 2?' Thanks.
 
Tim Mann's page may have a manual. I see a lot of stuff there at least probably some images and notes on manual updates or the programmers manual.
 
Hi Mike,

You have one of the machines I covet!

The short answer is "I don't know". One of the problem with the TRS 80 Model I/III/IV world is there are so many DOSes. All with their own unique syntaxes. I'm pretty familiar with NEWDOS/80 2.0 on the Model 1 but that's about as far as it goes.

There's bound to be manuals around on the web though. In fact, I think I have a PDF somewhere. PM if you can't find anything and I'll have a look.

Tez
 
Okay, I am real not sure how come I am getting this message. I am using LDOS 5.1.3 and simply trying to format a floppy disk in drive :1. I type format :1 and it asks some questions:

Disk name ? I answer Mike1
Single or Double Density? D
Number of Sides: 2
Number of Cylinders: I have no idea, have tried with 40,39,34 so far
stepping for bootstrap: just been hitting enter
formatting (goes through to whatever number from 00 to whatever number -1 (eg 40 would be 00-39)
verifying... does this until we get to the last cylinder number then
Format Aborted! Every time

And of course the disk is not readable by the system. I am a complete noob to the TRS-80 at least from DOS and the FORMAT command is really causing me a lot of frustration. Could someone give me an idea of what I need to do? Remember this is a model 4 but the LDOS is the 5.1.3 M3 version.

Is that the drives are not DD nor DS even though the disks are?

Thanks for a clue :)

Mike
 
Mike, I'm wondering if they might be 80 track drives? Would this make them 80 cylinders? (0 to 79)?

It's been a long time but I THINK a cylinder is equal to a track on double sided drives, yes?

I would expect a Mod 4 drive to be double density at least? Double sided also but maybe not?

Tez
 
One other possibility is that the drive(s) might not be working properly. Tracks get denser as they get close to the centre of the disk so if the drive is not working correctly, it will fail on those inner tracks.

Tez
 
Mike,

Your Model 4 is likely has double-density single-sided drives. The 4D (which I am lucky enough to have) has the double-density double-sided drives. You can tell if you have a 4D easily enough just by looking at the drive latches. Do they open up and down (single sided) or are they a lever that you rotate (double sided).

As for DOSes, you may want LS-DOS 6.3.1J as it is Y2K compatible. I just moved a few weeks ago and all my vintage computer stuff is still packed away. Give me a month or so and if you still need DOSes or other essentials to get you going give me a shout (doug dot mccomber at gmail dot com) and I'll make a copy for you on 5 1/4 and mail it to you.

There is also a Yahoo Group called, appropriately enough, TRS-80. There is a core group of people there who are very friendly and active in this hobby.

Regards,
Doug
 
I'll put them on my public ftp server. Anyone that needs them let me know. I don't want to just post the link. I constantly have traffic problems with ftp.
 
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